Bob’s 8 hour workshop with World Language and Literacy Ed department at the University of Georgia is coming up this weekend. Bob – I kind of assume this is a closed workshop but if not let us know here in

I wonder how cool it would be to go over a script as a random reading exercise, as per the script (link below) about the little girl and the animal story, and do R &

Sabrina also sent this third YouTube clip for French teachers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR4mlLiyjYo She shares: If anyone needs ideas on what or how to circle with this ipad versus paper clip: here is what I did today

Sabrina recently sent us this second YouTube link to the little French girl making up a story about animals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=381bv0_Gpo8 Both Sabrina and I have decided to spend a few days (at least!) on this.

For French teachers from Sabrina. Show them to your classes tomorrow: This is a very short clip ( 33 seconds) showing how texting and driving can be deadly in Canadian French (good to have them

I’m sure few will agree with me, but any focus in a language class on a scope and sequence, or pacing guide, or curriculum map, whatever it is called, is bad. Increasingly, I see that the

I got this from a PLC member. It’s a repeat post from a few weeks ago. It’s about the bios. If you are new to the group, you missed what we went through in terms

From Robert: Whenever colleagues question the “rigor” of your class and try to say that TPRS/CI is “too easy”, discuss with them the concept of academic rigor. I really like what the Department of State

Mary Beth shares: My cousin (school librarian) just posted this to Facebook – hahaha….written by Dr. Krashen! http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=5627#.UVmsKH5JMOY.facebook  

The two articles that follow this one are from previous years. Some may remember this thread, which I made into a category because I thought it was so important. I want to republish it here now for

Sabrina sent this and keep them coming Sabrina. The kids eat ’em up. Great way to start off a class. We probably need a category. I’ll make one called YouTube French Clips. I’ll make them for

This is from Mary Beth: Hey Ben – I am working on a paper right now about Standards for my Masters class.  I was poking around the NC Dept of Public Instruction site (NCDPI) because

About a year and a half ago Charlotte (Germany) invented something for middle and elementary kids and shared it with us here. It’s called a Wall Zoo. Then today Eric Herman referenced the idea in

Sabrina sends this: Ben, I found this link reading some posts on the TPRS list. It’s an interactive storywriting software. I can totally see this as another technology tool to add to Textivate and such.

For every circled question in a story, there are a number of cute answers, but only one can be chosen. The kids have these kinds of “inner score cards” during class. They know who said

Sometimes I feel a distance between me and the words I am saying to my students. I don’t feel connected to the words. When that happens, I am not connected to the students. I don’t

I used to teach Gifted/Talented classes using Socratic dialogue. I continue to try to apply what I did in those classes to my language classes. From those classes, I learned that the words that I say are

I suspect that by April many of us are victims of the all too common phenomenon of teacher burnout, at least on some level. It’s not a joke – it’s real – and we don’t

I heard someone say that these long, often multi-day inserves are just “efforts at micromanaging the staff and a knee-jerk reaction to the low standardized test scores and the fact that most kids are poor readers”.

This from chill: We are in a three day in-service at school on curriculum mapping. The template asks for the following information: 1. Essential questions. I was given the example “What are the days of

I was copied in on the following discussion between some of the Latin teachers on our site and want to share it with anybody interested at getting a closer, rather funkadelic, look at what’s shakin’ in their

Ben, there’s one more thing to add, I think, about SBG: How it lines up with the weekly/bi-weekly schedule we all find so powerful. Here it goes. (And I promise this is it! Like with

This is from Sabrina: Ben, I got an email from a former ESL professor of mine and she attached those two links to watch and remind us of …the magical power of music. It’s a

And this is the fourth of four substantial articles from James: Ben, this is the last e-mail I’ll send for the time being. Sorry for all the stuff, but I am really just feeling the

James continues: A few people have expressed concerns about how to keep a standards-based gradebook, especially if there is a school-wide policy of so many entries per week. Here’s my take. I wrote a detailed

We need a short break from all the SGB stuff. Mark offers that and thank you Mark: Hi Ben, I thought you might be amused by these two links featuring Kurt Vonnegut and his Masters

Note that James Hosler’s article on SBG has been renamed. I’ve had a lot of emails from teachers wondering where it went. I just changed the name to SBG 1. Sorry about the confusion. I’m

This is the second in a series of four articles by James on the SBG thread; the other two will appear tomorrow: Ben asked to establish the problem that standards-based grading solves. Why all the

This from James is very important: Ben, I finally had time to sit down and write out my approach to standards-based grading. I have written the first two parts so far, with one more to

Activer topics now are: SBG ELA/ELL Class Competitions Videos So I think we can’t have all three of those going at the same time – too much. I would like to go full blast on SBG

I just heard on web radio that every day 7,000 students drop out of high school. If their desks were stacked up, it would be to a height of 16,000 feet, higher than all of

This is good and I agree with Sabrina’s support of the idea that we need to bring in more video clips like the texting one she sent us a few weeks ago, especially at this

For those interested, in San Diego at iFLT (July 9 – 12), I will be doing the morning sessions with real high school students from the San Diego area, but I have asked Carol for the chance

Here is an article on public education: http://www.alternet.org/education/why-you-can-kiss-public-education-and-middle-class-goodbye

Shannon recommends these short clips for Movie Talk: Blue Umbrella. Café Parapluie.  

When doing Reading Option A, which is the reading sequence I suggest for readings based on stories (vs. novels, where R and D works best), we often tend to get locked into the story on

Hello hello, I hope you find yourself well :). I wanted to share with you a couple of things and ask for your opinions / the opinions of the PLC. 1.) So, great news! I’m

Having been a victim of my own need for approval from others for my entire career, I strenuously suggest that we avoid using national scores on any kind of exam to evaluate our work in

Last year we didn’t get jGR operational in our classrooms until later on in the fall. Next year, I plan to spend the first part of the first class explaining to the kids how they’ll be

John sends us a student comment template with pre-fab options to be cut and pasted into the student comment. James take note as we may want to add this into our templates hard link: Ben,

Miriam is Bob’s daughter, also a Latin teacher, and she shares her bio* with us: Salve! My name is Miriam Patrick and I am a Latin teacher in a public school in Georgia. I have

We’ve talked about how a follow up email to any observation is a good idea in this article from a few months ago: https://benslavic.com/blog/2013/02/03/the-best-defense-is-a-good-offense/ Just remember to cc yourself in, because the whole idea is

Last week Jennifer wrote a question about curriculum mapping. Here is a link to that thread: https://benslavic.com/blog/2013/03/17/curriculum-map-question/ Then I asked Diana Noonan about this. She was very kind to respond with the information below: “There

Before helping the group address this question about writing from James, you may want to review what Robert has written about his Essential Sentences idea at: https://benslavic.com/blog/2012/11/16/essential-sentences/ https://benslavic.com/blog/2013/01/30/essential-sentences-2/ Ben, I figure this might be helpful to

While we are celebrating Chris’ big win in Ohio, we have reason to celebrate more happy news from Ohio. Jeff Brickler has been refreshingly transparent and very honest with us this year in sharing what he has

More from Chris: For my masters project, I gave my Spanish 1 class the Natl. Spanish Exam.  I’m comparing my output, grammar based last year to my CI class this year.  Last year I gave

Lately we’ve had some stellar reports from some of the group. Here’s another one, and one we’ve been waiting for, about how Chris Roberts’ presentation went at Central States last weekend. I give this young

The new corporate model when fully applied to education will change the culture of professional review. In the past, there was a more collegial approach, which had its flaws, but at least educators were evaluating

I have been talking to Charlotte and the plane fares were twice as expensive from Germany as she expected so we have to help her. If anyone going to either San Diego or Dallas can help